


Dissonant

by aces



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Book 46: The Year of Intelligent Tigers, M/M, Multi, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-06
Updated: 2008-06-06
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20641862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: The guitarist and the violinist were fighting in their music.





	Dissonant

**Author's Note:**

> First section takes place during _Year of Intelligent Tigers_. It’s been a couple years since I read it last & I don’t have my copy on me, so, uh, if things are a little off? That would be why. Inspired in part by brewsternorth's ficlet "Overtures."

The guitarist and the violinist were fighting in their music. This was nothing new—on Hitchemus, arguments were more likely to be fought over and resolved through the creation of something new than through the use of actual _words_—and there were plenty of other loud, distracting things going on at the party, but Karl noticed the argument nonetheless.

The party was happening onstage and in the house of one of the larger auditoriums, and practically everyone had naturally brought a (portable) instrument of their choice (and what some people considered portable could be a bit of a surprise), so it took Karl a while to track down the exact guitarist and violinist he could overhear arguing. He kept his ears pricked, though, and felt the vibrations through the floor, the seats, his own fingertips and chest as he circulated.

The guitar was sulky, mournful and slow, fighting against the tide of the violin’s angrier, sharper slides and cascades. Oil and water, Karl thought, or 3:4 and 4:4 time. He wondered what the argument was really about.

Eventually he found the pair of players, holed up in a back corner of the stage, practically falling into the wings. The guitarist sat on a generic black block, his face drawn and about as unhappy as the song he played. The violinist was turned slightly away from him and from the rest of the stage, and Karl couldn’t see his face, but he could see the man’s back, wrapped in velvet, dynamic and straining, reaching for the music.

Karl hung back a while longer to listen, enjoying the counterpoint and _tug_ between the two players. Gradually, the violinist turned back toward his accompanist, apparently realizing he didn’t play alone; gradually, the guitarist’s face lightened, his body relaxed. He didn’t look up at—his friend, his lover?—but his playing picked up, even as the violinist’s slowed down, and they met in something approaching a middle, in a song that soared and fell like the wind in the Bewilderness.

“Okay, fine,” the guitarist said as their song wound down. He put his instrument aside and stretched, cracking his knuckles. “You _do_ know what you’re doing. I’ll never disbelieve you again.”

The violinist looked at him steadily, and the seated man looked away first, his face tightening and turning sullen again. And then the violinist smiled, lines around his eyes crinkling, curls bouncing a little as he sprawled next to the other man on the block, throwing an arm around the other man’s shoulders. “Oh, come, Fitz,” he said. “You should be _enjoying_ yourself. Isn’t Hitchemus right up your alley?”

Fitz—apparently—gave the violinist a sidelong look, and then he smiled a little too, and Karl almost would have walked away in disappointment if he hadn’t been so enchanted by the playing. Fitz bumped shoulders with the violinist and looked up, catching sight of Karl.

Karl took his courage in his hands and immediately stepped forward, before Fitz’s face could close again, before he could turn angry or disappointed and use words instead of music to express his displeasure. “I couldn’t help listening,” he said, looking at them both, but admittedly focusing most of his attention on the violinist. “Your playing was superb.”

“Thanks,” Fitz muttered, slouching away from his friend, who stood up to shake Karl’s hand, momentarily forgetting he still held the violin in one hand.

“Thank you very much,” said the violinist. “This is my friend, Fitz; I’m the Doctor. How do you do?”

“Hello,” Karl said, laughing and shaking the Doctor’s hand after some juggling. “I’m Karl. Have you been on Hitchemus long?”

“We just arrived,” said the Doctor. Behind him, Fitz picked up his guitar and started idly strumming a mournful little ditty. The Doctor turned to look at him for a moment, but Fitz didn’t meet his eye. The Doctor frowned and turned back to Karl.

“It’s a fascinating place,” the violinist said. He started leading Karl away from the guitarist. If Fitz noticed, he still didn’t look up, or say anything. “My friend Fitz is really the musician, but I like to dabble a little on occasion.”

“Dabble,” Karl said. “You call that dabbling? How are you when you really focus on something?”

“Formidable,” the Doctor said without modesty as he led Karl toward the refreshments. Karl’s voice was hoarse already from having to raise itself to be heard over the din; the Doctor never seemed to raise his voice but Karl could hear and understand him perfectly, as if the room’s acoustics shaped themselves to suit the Doctor’s voice. And his voice was as delightful as his playing, as his face. Karl thought he should probably get a grip on himself. “Would you care for a drink?”

“Yes, please,” Karl said. “Should we get something for your—boyfriend? Fitz?”

“Boyfriend?” the Doctor paused, holding two small cups of punch. Knowing the host of the party, Karl thought it was probably _special_ punch, about as safe as the suspicious yellow dip that always seemed to show up at these parties even if everyone denied bringing it. Karl took the cup the Doctor handed him anyway, feeling reckless. The Doctor smiled, in a way that meant absolutely nothing to the conductor. “I think Fitz would be mortified to hear you say that. But yes, getting something for Fitz to drink would be a good idea.”

Karl very carefully did not skip a step or two, if only because he didn’t want to spill any of his punch.

They made their way again to the back of the stage, drinking and chatting, and by the time they found Fitz’s generic black block Karl felt as if they were fast friends. But Fitz was nowhere to be seen, and neither was his guitar.

The Doctor shrugged. “He probably slipped out for a cigarette,” he sighed.

“What were you fighting about? Earlier?” Karl could have slapped himself after he said the words, but they were already out of his mouth, undeniable.

“Fighting?” the Doctor looked at him in surprise. “We weren’t fighting. Now tell me more about this concert of yours. You’re in need of a violinist, you said?”

Later, months and years later, thinking back to that moment and the Doctor’s blank look of incomprehension, Karl thought that if he had been a more astute individual he would have considered it a warning to take note, and take care. But Karl had been a little infatuated, and a little unwise, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret the following weeks anyway.

*

Fitz took refuge in the music room one day, pulling his guitar out from under a pile of dirty laundry and empty cigarette packets, warming up and playing for the first time since Hitchemus. His fingers were achy. He shouldn’t have gone so long without playing.

He kept coming back to that damned six-note unfinished piece, and it kept wandering away from him, still incomplete and trailing off into nonsense and other bits and bobs. He supposed he would never finish it, that it would follow him into infinity—

God, that was a pretty daft thought. He only started thinking things like that when he was stuck on the TARDIS too long. He hoped they’d be landing soon, even if Anji seemed glad of the chance to catch up on some sleep.

“When did you start that?” the Doctor asked, and Fitz looked up, startled. The Time Lord was leaning against the doorway. He looked tired. Fitz wondered if he was glad of the respite as well, and felt guilty for his own desire to be moving again.

“Ages ago,” Fitz said. He watched as the Doctor meandered around the room, eventually ending up at the baby grand. The Doctor sat down at it and idly fiddled with the keys, picking out Fitz’s six-note melody at random, transposing it into another key, slowing the rhythm and cadence down. “I didn’t think you remembered it.”

“Did you play it for me? Before?”

Before. They carefully skirted the topic, rigid boundaries put in place when they weren’t looking. Fitz looked down at his guitar again, picked at the tune in the same slow time as the Doctor. “Sort of.”

One day, in the butterfly room, when Sam was still with them, just before she left. A glorious day of sunshine, and Sam was laughing at something the Doctor said, and Fitz sat a little away from them, gathering the form of the music and the gist of the words like a cloud passing overhead. He’d played with more strength, moved from humming to actual words, and hadn’t been concerned if the Doctor and Sam were listening or not.

He’d given Sam another music lesson that day. The first one since before San Francisco, the last one before she left.

Fitz’s fingers tightened, involuntarily, and he removed his hand from the guitar, stretching it. The Doctor still sat at the piano, adding little flourishes and harmonies to Fitz’s melody. “I did remember it,” the Doctor hesitated over his words, but his fingers moved steadily up and down the keyboard. “I couldn’t remember why, but I always knew the song…”

Fitz took a deep breath. He untangled himself from the guitar, set it gently aside, and stood up. He moved closer to the Doctor, stood behind his shoulder, watched the Doctor’s fingers on the piano. “Given up on the violin?” he asked after a while.

The Doctor gave an infinitesimal shrug. “I hate to be pigeonholed,” he said.

He was coming no closer to a resolution for Fitz’s melody than Fitz ever had. Maybe the song would follow them both into infinity, as unfinished and incomplete as their lives.

Maybe Fitz should go track down Anji, get into an argument with her or get her to laugh. Anything to get away from that damned song.

The Doctor brought his hands up from the keyboard, either catching Fitz’s train of thought or tired himself of the unbreakable tune. He swung around and looked up at Fitz. “Why didn’t you play it for me later?”

Later. Hitchemus, maybe, or maybe just anytime since St. Louis, since Anji, since reuniting. Fitz shrugged. “Still not finished,” he said. “What would be the point, other than to bug you?”

“I like it,” the Doctor said.

Fitz thought about doing something crazy then. Sitting down next to the Doctor and putting his head on the Doctor’s shoulder, perhaps; or yelling a lot; or hitting the Doctor over the head with his guitar. One of those daft impulses you get sometimes and never actually follow through on because you’re still a sane, relatively rational human being. Not like the Doctor, who snogs you at the drop of a hat or if you’ve been missing for a couple hours.

Fitz thought about it, but he didn’t do anything because he was still a sane, relatively rational human being. “Good,” was all he said, and “Thank you” because he had been a well brought up lad, and he turned away again to pick up his guitar and take it back to his room and let it lie under a pile of dirty laundry and empty cigarette packets. And then he’d go to the kitchen and make a pot of tea and track down Anji and throw spitballs at her until she retaliated and they ended up back in the kitchen, laughing and fighting over the chocolate digestives. It was a good plan, and it would end with the three of them actually leaving the TARDIS and getting in trouble somewhere, and Fitz was really looking forward to when that happened.

“Thank you for the song, Fitz,” the Doctor said quietly just as Fitz reached the doorway, and Fitz turned around and met the Doctor’s eye and smiled.

“Maybe I’ll get around eventually to finishing one for you,” Fitz said just before he left.


End file.
